“‘Why?’ ‘What for?’” his wife repeated with a greater vehemence. “Do YOU ask me such a thing as that? Do you really want to know?”
“Yes; I’d want to know — I would if I believed it.”
“Then I’ll tell you,” she said in a cold fury. “It’s on account of you, Virgil, and nothing else in the world.”
He hooted at her. “Oh, yes! These girls don’t like ME, so they pick on Alice.”
“Quit your palavering and evading,” she said. “A crowd of girls like that, when they get a pretty girl like Alice among them, they act just like wild beasts. They’ll tear her to pieces, or else they’ll chase her and run her out, because they know if she had half a chance she’d outshine ’em. They can’t do that to a girl like Mildred Palmer because she’s got money and family to back her. Now you listen to me, Virgil Adams: the way the world is now, money IS family. Alice would have just as much ‘family’ as any of ’em every single bit — if you hadn’t fallen behind in the race.”
“How did I — —”
“Yes, you did!” she cried. “Twenty-five years ago when we were starting and this town was smaller, you and I could have gone with any of ’em if we’d tried hard enough. Look at the people we knew then that do hold their heads up alongside of anybody in this town! WHY can they? Because the men of those families made money and gave their children everything that makes life worth living! Why can’t we hold our heads up? Because those men passed you in the race. They went up the ladder, and you — you’re still a clerk down at that old hole!”
“You leave that out, please,” he said. “I thought you were going to tell me something Henrietta Lamb had done to our Alice.”
“You BET I’m going to tell you,” she assured him, vehemently. “But first I’m telling WHY she does it. It’s because you’ve never given Alice any backing nor any background, and they all know they can do anything they like to her with perfect impunity. If she had the hundredth part of what THEY have to fall back on she’d have made ’em sing a mighty different song long ago!”
“How would she?”
“Oh, my heavens, but you’re slow!” Mrs. Adams moaned. “Look here! You remember how practically all the nicest boys in this town used to come here a few years ago. Why, they were all crazy over her; and the girls HAD to be nice to her then. Look at the difference now! There’ll be a whole month go by and not a young man come to call on her, let alone send her candy or flowers, or ever think of TAKING her any place and yet she’s prettier and brighter than she was when they used to come. It isn’t the child’s fault she couldn’t hold ’em, is it? Poor thing, SHE tried hard enough! I suppose you’d say it was her fault, though.”
“No; I wouldn’t.”
“Then whose fault is it?”
“Oh, mine, mine,” he said, wearily. “I drove the young men away, of course.”
“You might as well have driven ’em, Virgil. It amounts to just the same thing.”
“How does it?”
“Because as they got older a good many of ’em began to think more about money; that’s one thing. Money’s at the bottom of it all, for that matter. Look at these country clubs and all such things: the other girls’ families belong and we don’t, and Alice don’t; and she can’t go unless somebody takes her, and nobody does any more. Look at the other girls’ houses, and then look at our house, so shabby and old-fashioned she’d be pretty near ashamed to ask anybody to come in and sit down nowadays! Look at her clothes — oh, yes; you think you shelled out a lot for that little coat of hers and the hat and skirt she got last March; but it’s nothing. Some of these girls nowadays spend more than your whole salary on their clothes. And what jewellery has she got? A plated watch and two or three little pins and rings of the kind people’s maids wouldn’t wear now. Good Lord, Virgil Adams, wake up! Don’t sit there and tell me you don’t know things like this mean SUFFERING for the child!”
He had begun to rub his hands wretchedly back and forth over his bony knees, as if in that way he somewhat alleviated the tedium caused by her racking voice. “Oh, my, my!” he muttered. “OH, my, my!”
“Yes, I should think you WOULD say ‘Oh, my, my!’” she took him up, loudly. “That doesn’t help things much! If you ever wanted to DO anything about it, the poor child might see some gleam of hope in her life. You don’t CARE for her, that’s the trouble; you don’t care a single thing about her.”
“I don’t?”
“No; you don’t. Why, even with your miserable little salary you could have given her more than you have. You’re the closest man I ever knew: it’s like pulling teeth to get a dollar out of you for her, now and then, and yet you hide some away, every month or so, in some wretched little investment or other. You — —”
“Look here, now,” he interrupted, angrily. “You look here! If I didn’t put a little by whenever I could, in a bond or something, where would you be if anything happened to me? The insurance doctors never passed me; YOU know that. Haven’t we got to have SOMETHING to fall back on?”
“Yes, we have!” she cried. “We ought to have something to go on with right now, too, when we need it. Do you suppose these snippets would treat Alice the way they do if she could afford to ENTERTAIN? They leave her out of their dinners and dances simply because they know she can’t give any dinners and dances to leave them out of! They know she can’t get EVEN, and that’s the whole story! That’s why Henrietta Lamb’s done this thing to her now.”
Adams had gone back to his rubbing of his knees. “Oh, my, my!” he said. “WHAT thing?”
She told him. “Your dear, grand, old Mister Lamb’s Henrietta has sent out invitations for a large party — a LARGE one. Everybody that is anybody in this town is asked, you can be sure. There’s a very fine young man, a Mr. Russell, has just come to town, and he’s interested in Alice, and he’s asked her to go to this dance with him. Well, Alice can’t accept. She can’t go with him, though she’d give anything in the world to do it. Do you understand? The reason she can’t is because Henrietta Lamb hasn’t invited her. Do you want to know why Henrietta hasn’t invited her? It’s because she knows Alice can’t get even, and because she thinks Alice ought to be snubbed like this on account of only being the daughter of one of her grandfather’s clerks. I HOPE you understand!”
“Oh, my, my!” he said. “OH, my, my!”
“That’s your sweet old employer,” his wife cried, tauntingly. “That’s your dear, kind, grand old Mister Lamb! Alice has been left out of a good many smaller things, like big dinners and little dances, but this is just the same as serving her notice that she’s out of everything! And it’s all done by your dear, grand old — —”
“Look here!” Adams exclaimed. “I don’t want to hear any more of that! You can’t hold him responsible for everything his grandchildren do, I guess! He probably doesn’t know a thing about it. You don’t suppose he’s troubling HIS head over — —”
But she burst out at him passionately. “Suppose you trouble YOUR head about it! You’d better, Virgil Adams! You’d better, unless you want to see your child just dry up into a miserable old maid! She’s still young and she has a chance for happiness, if she had a father that didn’t bring a millstone to hang around her neck, instead of what he ought to give her! You just wait till you die and God asks you what you had in your breast instead of a heart!”
“Oh, my, my!” he groaned. “What’s my heart got to do with it?”
“Nothing! You haven’t got one or you’d give her what she needed. Am I asking anything you CAN’T do? You know better; you know I’m not!”
At this he sat suddenly rigid, his troubled hands ceasing to rub his knees; and he looked at her fixedly. “Now, tell me,” he said, slowly. “Just what ARE you asking?”
“You know!” she sobbed.
“You mean you’ve broken your word never to speak of THAT to me again?”
“What do I care for my word?” she cried, and, sinking to the floor at his feet, rocked herself back and
forth there. “Do you suppose I’ll let my ‘word’ keep me from struggling for a little happiness for my children? It won’t, I tell you; it won’t! I’ll struggle for that till I die! I will, till I die till I die!”
He rubbed his head now instead of his knees, and, shaking all over, he got up and began with uncertain steps to pace the floor.
“Hell, hell, hell!” he said. “I’ve got to go through THAT again!”
“Yes, you have!” she sobbed. “Till I die.”
“Yes; that’s what you been after all the time I was getting well.”
“Yes, I have, and I’ll keep on till I die!”
“A fine wife for a man,” he said. “Beggin’ a man to be a dirty dog!”
“No! To be a MAN — and I’ll keep on till I die!”
Adams again fell back upon his last solace: he walked, half staggering, up and down the room, swearing in a rhythmic repetition.
His wife had repetitions of her own, and she kept at them in a voice that rose to a higher and higher pitch, like the sound of an old well-pump. “Till I die! Till I die! Till I DIE!”
She ended in a scream; and Alice, coming up the stairs, thanked heaven that Russell had gone. She ran to her father’s door and went in.
Adams looked at her, and gesticulated shakily at the convulsive figure on the floor. “Can you get her out of here?”
Alice helped Mrs. Adams to her feet; and the stricken woman threw her arms passionately about her daughter.
“Get her out!” Adams said, harshly; then cried, “Wait!”
Alice, moving toward the door, halted, and looked at him blankly, over her mother’s shoulder. “What is it, papa?”
He stretched out his arm and pointed at her. “She says — she says you have a mean life, Alice.”
“No, papa.”
Mrs. Adams turned in her daughter’s arms. “Do you hear her lie? Couldn’t you be as brave as she is, Virgil?”
“Are you lying, Alice?” he asked. “Do you have a mean time?”
“No, papa.”
He came toward her. “Look at me!” he said. “Things like this dance now — is that so hard to bear?”
Alice tried to say, “No, papa,” again, but she couldn’t. Suddenly and in spite of herself she began to cry.
“Do you hear her?” his wife sobbed. “Now do you — —”
He waved at them fiercely. “Get out of here!” he said. “Both of you! Get out of here!”
As they went, he dropped in his chair and bent far forward, so that his haggard face was concealed from them. Then, as Alice closed the door, he began to rub his knees again, muttering, “Oh, my, my! OH, my, my!”
CHAPTER XIV
THERE SHONE A jovial sun overhead on the appointed “day after to-morrow”; a day not cool yet of a temperature friendly to walkers; and the air, powdered with sunshine, had so much life in it that it seemed to sparkle. To Arthur Russell this was a day like a gay companion who pleased him well; but the gay companion at his side pleased him even better. She looked her prettiest, chattered her wittiest, smiled her wistfulest, and delighted him with all together.
“You look so happy it’s easy to see your father’s taken a good turn,” he told her.
“Yes; he has this afternoon, at least,” she said. “I might have other reasons for looking cheerful, though.”
“For instance?”
“Exactly!” she said, giving him a sweet look just enough mocked by her laughter. “For instance!”
“Well, go on,” he begged.
“Isn’t it expected?” she asked.
“Of you, you mean?”
“No,” she returned. “For you, I mean!”
In this style, which uses a word for any meaning that quick look and colourful gesture care to endow it with, she was an expert; and she carried it merrily on, leaving him at liberty (one of the great values of the style) to choose as he would how much or how little she meant. He was content to supply mere cues, for although he had little coquetry of his own, he had lately begun to find that the only interesting moments in his life were those during which Alice Adams coquetted with him. Happily, these obliging moments extended themselves to cover all the time he spent with her. However serious she might seem, whatever appeared to be her topic, all was thou-and-I.
He planned for more of it, seeing otherwise a dull evening ahead; and reverted, afterwhile, to a forbidden subject. “About that dance at Miss Lamb’s — since your father’s so much better — —”
She flushed a little. “Now, now!” she chided him. “We agreed not to say any more about that.”
“Yes, but since he IS better — —”
Alice shook her head. “He won’t be better to-morrow. He always has a bad day after a good one especially after such a good one as this is.”
“But if this time it should be different,” Russell persisted; “wouldn’t you be willing to come if he’s better by to-morrow evening? Why not wait and decide at the last minute?”
She waved her hands airily. “What a pother!” she cried. “What does it matter whether poor little Alice Adams goes to a dance or not?”
“Well, I thought I’d made it clear that it looks fairly bleak to me if you don’t go.”
“Oh, yes!” she jeered.
“It’s the simple truth,” he insisted. “I don’t care a great deal about dances these days; and if you aren’t going to be there — —”
“You could stay away,” she suggested. “You wouldn’t!”
“Unfortunately, I can’t. I’m afraid I’m supposed to be the excuse. Miss Lamb, in her capacity as a friend of my relatives — —”
“Oh, she’s giving it for YOU! I see! On Mildred’s account you mean?”
At that his face showed an increase of colour. “I suppose just on account of my being a cousin of Mildred’s and of — —”
“Of course! You’ll have a beautiful time, too. Henrietta’ll see that you have somebody to dance with besides Miss Dowling, poor man!”
“But what I want somebody to see is that I dance with you! And perhaps your father — —”
“Wait!” she said, frowning as if she debated whether or not to tell him something of import; then, seeming to decide affirmatively, she asked: “Would you really like to know the truth about it?”
“If it isn’t too unflattering.”
“It hasn’t anything to do with you at all,” she said. “Of course I’d like to go with you and to dance with you — though you don’t seem to realize that you wouldn’t be permitted much time with me.”
“Oh, yes, I — —”
“Never mind!” she laughed. “Of course you wouldn’t. But even if papa should be better to-morrow, I doubt if I’d go. In fact, I know I wouldn’t. There’s another reason besides papa.”
“Is there?”
“Yes. The truth is, I don’t get on with Henrietta Lamb. As a matter of fact, I dislike her, and of course that means she dislikes me. I should never think of asking her to anything I gave, and I really wonder she asks me to things SHE gives.” This was a new inspiration; and Alice, beginning to see her way out of a perplexity, wished that she had thought of it earlier: she should have told him from the first that she and Henrietta had a feud, and consequently exchanged no invitations. Moreover, there was another thing to beset her with little anxieties: she might better not have told him from the first, as she had indeed told him by intimation, that she was the pampered daughter of an indulgent father, presumably able to indulge her; for now she must elaborately keep to the part. Veracity is usually simple; and its opposite, to be successful, should be as simple; but practitioners of the opposite are most often impulsive, like Alice; and, like her, they become enmeshed in elaborations.
“It wouldn’t be very nice for me to go to her house,” Alice went on, “when I wouldn’t want her in mine. I’ve never admired her. I’ve always thought she was lacking in some things most people are supposed to be equipped with — for instance, a certain feeling about the death of a father
who was always pretty decent to his daughter. Henrietta’s father died just, eleven months and twenty-seven days before your cousin’s dance, but she couldn’t stick out those few last days and make it a year; she was there.”
Alice stopped, then laughed ruefully, exclaiming, “But this is dreadful of me!”
“Is it?”
“Blackguarding her to you when she’s giving a big party for you! Just the way Henrietta would blackguard me to you — heaven knows what she WOULDN’T say if she talked about me to you! It would be fair, of course, but — well, I’d rather she didn’t!” And with that, Alice let her pretty hand, in its white glove, rest upon his arm for a moment; and he looked down at it, not unmoved to see it there. “I want to be unfair about just this,” she said, letting a troubled laughter tremble through her appealing voice as she spoke. “I won’t take advantage of her with anybody, except just — you! I’d a little rather you didn’t hear anybody blackguard me, and, if you don’t mind — could you promise not to give Henrietta the chance?”
It was charmingly done, with a humorous, faint pathos altogether genuine; and Russell found himself suddenly wanting to shout at her, “Oh, you DEAR!” Nothing else seemed adequate; but he controlled the impulse in favour of something more conservative.
“Imagine any one speaking unkindly of you — not praising you!”
“Who HAS praised me to you?” she asked, quickly.
“I haven’t talked about you with any one; but if I did, I know they’d — —”
“No, no!” she cried, and went on, again accompanying her words with little tremulous runs of laughter. “You don’t understand this town yet. You’ll be surprised when you do; we’re different. We talk about one another fearfully! Haven’t I just proved it, the way I’ve been going for Henrietta? Of course I didn’t say anything really very terrible about her, but that’s only because I don’t follow that practice the way most of the others do. They don’t stop with the worst of the truth they can find: they make UP things — yes, they really do! And, oh, I’d RATHER they didn’t make up things about me — to you!”
Collected Works of Booth Tarkington Page 293